We've been previewing Tier 19 armor sets but we found a surprising twist - these tier sets include matching cloaks. Other news today includes a roundup of blue posts and blue tweets on various Legion topics.

Matching Tier 19 Cloaks

Finding the perfect cloak to match tier sets has always been a challenge. In Legion, this is all changing since Blizzard is creating matching cloaks for all Tier 19 Normal and Mythic armor sets.

So far in the data, the tier cloaks come in six colors, corresponding to the four Normal and two Mythic colors. They also come in short, medium, long, and full styles - we've previewed the fullest version whenever possible.

Do you think this means cloaks are going to be part of tier sets, with 6 piece tier sets and bonuses like Diablo? Or is this simply a convenient change for transmog?

Below are the Tier 19 cloak icons in the database, a video of all matching cloaks (11 classes, warriors not available yet), and images comparing the tier gear to all six colors. Click on the images to view a larger version.

Blue Tweets

Below are replies made from WarcraftDevs in the past day or so. You can view older tweets and filter by class using our Blue Tweet Tracker.

For the tweet about cosmetic spells, it's worth repeating that so far in the Legion data, the spells for cosmetic glyphs have been removed and instead replaced by books that teach you the cosmetic ability.

Glyph of Stars in Legion

Lore

Definitely been some confusion/miscommunication on this topic. To be clear: we know that some Balance Druid players like being able to play with their character in a normal humanoid form, instead of Moonkin, and removing their ability to do so has never been the plan. We’ve just been considering some different ways to deliver it, and whether or not the blue starry visual has to be tied to it or not.

So, to clear the air a bit, here’s our current plan:

Glifo de Estrellas will be a minor glyph for Moonkin Form, which gives it the same Astral Form effect as on live (where you stay in caster form with a blue translucent visual).

The Bendición de los ancestros buffs will have lunar/solar visuals that apply to your current form (whether it be humanoid or Moonkin).

Healing Design in Legion

Sigma

Thanks for all the feedback. A few things:

1) It's definitely still intended that you consider mana costs in choosing heals. I wouldn't agree with the characterization that any changes (recent or otherwise) reflect an abandonment of this. It's widely accepted among players that mana became overly abundant at high ilvls in past expansions, which did in some cases undermine the resource management aspect. But the spell selections of each class are still made with the intention of mana being an important factor. They are in Legion just as they have been in the past, with the main change being to avoid having mana grow excessively generously throughout the expansion. Jumping ahead, trinkets are indeed one place where we may provide opporunities to invest in more mana. But mana regen will not be passively increasing by a large amount simply due to gear advancement, largely for these reasons.

6) Tranquilidad and Himno divino should still deliver significantly more healing than those players would typically do in 8 seconds. Having these sorts of spells (both the channeled and instant varieties) do "significantly more" than usual, as opposed to the overwhelming strength they have on live, might take some getting used to. But there is no reason they won't be strong and helpful spells to use either at specific high-damage encounter moments or simply because the player needs to catch up in a bad healing situation. In both of these cases, the intention is that the cooldowns don't completely supplant the normal healing gameplay, but give a boost to output at a key moment. On Tranquility and Divine Hymn in particular, the 8-second channel causes the biggest problem in the dungeon context, and both of these spells will do increased healing outside of raids to account for that.

The Aura talent row, Aura mastery spell, and corresponding artifact trait are all reworked in an upcoming patch. Among other things, we agree the trait giving Aura Mastery the effect of all three Auras eliminates too much of the significance of the talent choice.

7) We understand the importance of utility. I want to point out that on live, the dominance of Disc Priest and Paladin in the highest-level raiding is primarily due to their core healing function and not to unique non-healing utility (exception in some cases for Bendición de protección, but the removal of Clemency from all specs in Legion reduces that problem significantly). Avoiding a repeat situation where some healers feel left out of the most optimized Mythic healing groups is likely a question of balancing the actual heals, not of more incidental utility buttons such as Carga de viento, Deseo del tigre, Estimular and so on.

The artifact trait granting a 5% haste aura will also be changed before Holy Paladin is playable on alpha.To illustrate with numbers: if 100 DPS is incoming and you have to choose between spending a little bit of mana to do 50 HPS, a medium amount of mana to do 125 HPS, or a large amount of mana to do 200 HPS, the correct choice is 125 HPS, but then every 5th second there's nothing to heal. All I am saying is that healers should be able to do something meaningful in this 5th second.

Note that even in your example, you could instead spend every 3rd second on your 50 HPS heal, and save a little mana over your solution (that never uses that heal and instead fills every 5th second with DPS). In any situation where healing and mana are a significant challenge, that gameplay is still present, and toolkits with different spells of varying efficiency provide opportunity for more skilled healers to know when and how much to use the cheaper options.

On 7) While I agree that HFC's healer composition issues stemmed largely from actual healing issues, I still think that more effort can be put towards ensuring that every healer has things they can do that are useful and "cool" beyond filling health bars. Similar to the above, it is less about power and more that it feels bad to be asked to justify why your spec should be brought when another spec brings X ability and not have an answer. Currently I think that HPriest/Druid/MW all have difficulty answering that question and while it may not matter much to people that have a good understanding of the entire healing picture, this topic holds a lot of sway when it comes to the general community's opinions on balance.

Again, nobody's denying the value of utility abilities that are fun to use (defined as you did in the OP as things other than healing output or equivalent shielding/damage-reduction). Merely trying to avoid conflating it with major healer balance concerns. To your point, even the Disc Priest in Warlords didn't justify being brought by some X factor that raid leaders had to have, other than their sheer volume of healing/shielding. Their extras like Cuerpo y mente were comparatively minor. Similarly, something like Wind Rush isn't intended to dominate the importance of actual healing when deciding what classes or individuals to bring to a raid, and we'll examine it closely if it does. It likely won't, as it's somewhat weaker than the live spell Rugido de estampida (which hasn't had such an effect)--much smaller radius and no snare break (also a 2min cooldown which I believe you haven't seen yet).

Subtlety Rogue Feedback

Celestalon

The point of alpha testing has always been to test and get feedback. That's especially valuable and needed on ideas that are hard to test internally, and ones that need to be experienced to judge.

As such, we sometimes will go forward with testing something that people respond negatively to on paper, to see if that response remains the same once it's actually been tried. That can be concerning, and feel like we're not listening or caring about your feedback, but it couldn't be any further from the truth. We hear you, loud and clear.

The idea of a Pícaro that got to do the full Opener-Builder-Finisher-Vanish cycle repeatedly was an extremely compelling fantasy to us. But it also was a scary one, from a balance point of view. Because of that, we were quite timid about it, reducing the stealth to not be actual stealth, taking away more CC to compensate for the potential of many Cheap Shots, initially taking away Shadowstep to compensate for incredible mobility potential of Embate de las Sombras, and felt tentatively OK with the reduced flexibility of the new Sombras crecientes due to its sheer uptime. Additionally, there were some bugs and tuning issues in the currently live alpha build that make Subtlety seem worse than it is, such as Hoja de la noche doing less damage than Eviscerar, which we'll get fixed.

Feedback has been clear. The core issue is that the Opener-Builder-Finisher-Vanish cycle doesn't feel distinct or special; Embate de las Sombras feels remarkably like Puñalada and it's easy to not even feel a difference. The upside isn't there, and the downsides are many and strong. And, the gameplay is not engaging enough overall.

So, a future alpha build (not sure yet if it'll be the next one, or the one after that) will have significant changes to Subtlety. It'll include things like Sombras crecientes returning to being an active ability, the addition of a new opener, and the return of some more CC. Stay tuned for full details when the build is ready.

Thanks for all your constructive feedback, and we look forward to reading more of it when you are able to try the next version.Yeah. Angsty moments aside, this feels like a pretty nice victory for the alpha testing process as a whole. This was the right time to test a major spec-gameplay change like this, and the quality of player feedback in this forum (as well as a couple of threads in other public venues) was high. Personally I much prefer having had a chance to playtest a different Sub design in this sandbox over only seeing and reacting theoretical changes on paper. And I think it's helpful that everybody, both playtesters and onlookers alike, got to see that testing and feedback play out.

I think this is a great sentiment, and I hope it spreads. Pre-release (alpha/beta/PTR) is the perfect place for us to experiment with uncertain changes, and it works best when players trust in that process. This should be seen as an example of a successful testing process, not a 'victory of rogues over designers'. We *all* win by trying out new things, even if those tests produce less than favorable results. If we never try out wild or scary changes, the game never evolves into something much greater or more exciting. I hope this helps players see that there is wisdom in responding to concerning-sounding changes, not with vitriol and doomsaying, but rather with testing, evaluating, and giving constructive feedback. Thanks to all who have done so.

Comentarios

Comentario de GrizzlyUK

on 2016-02-02T20:45:14-06:00

Any info on just how the removal of minor glyphs will work in regards to the ones a character currently knows? Will they simply be removed, leaving you to acquire the new book to learn the new cosmetic ability, or will the minor glyphs you currently know be converted into the new cosmetic ability? Just wondering if it would be worth ensuring all characters know all available minor glyphs prior to Legion's arrival or whether it's going to be a "clean slate" type of thing with whatever minor glyphs your character(s) know now being wiped away.

My guess is that minor glyphs will simply be removed and we'll have to acquire the new book to learn whichever new cosmetic ability we want our character(s) to have.

Comentario de Pessimissed

on 2016-02-02T21:17:15-06:00

Love those capes.

Comentario de thaedris20

on 2016-02-02T21:24:01-06:00

I think its cool that they are now making cloaks based around tier, wonder if they restricted to that class or not though, love the druids cloak design the most so I may have to find another way to get it if thats the case.

Also just realized that its just the Warrior tier now that we havent seen yet.

Comentario de Raynre

on 2016-02-02T21:54:54-06:00

I like a bunch of the cloaks. So many from Cata onward are horribly overdesigned.

Comentario de Raynre

on 2016-02-02T22:09:16-06:00

Any info on just how the removal of minor glyphs will work in regards to the ones a character currently knows? Will they simply be removed, leaving you to acquire the new book to learn the new cosmetic ability, or will the minor glyphs you currently know be converted into the new cosmetic ability? Just wondering if it would be worth ensuring all characters know all available minor glyphs prior to Legion's arrival or whether it's going to be a "clean slate" type of thing with whatever minor glyphs your character(s) know now being wiped away.

My guess is that minor glyphs will simply be removed and we'll have to acquire the new book to learn whichever new cosmetic ability we want our character(s) to have.

No one knows yet, a lot of these questions will be answered when we're allowed to transfer characters rather than creating new ones.

Comentario de OreoLover

on 2016-02-02T22:12:23-06:00

Thank goodness, about the Astral form.

Comentario de Drahken

on 2016-02-02T22:16:46-06:00

Is it just me or are some of those tier sets INCREDIBLY boring and disappointing? Like, hunter and monk the most so. Those look like generic Wrath vendor gear.

Comentario de Joshmaul

on 2016-02-02T22:37:06-06:00

Is it just me or are some of those tier sets INCREDIBLY boring and disappointing? Like, hunter and monk the most so. Those look like generic Wrath vendor gear.

I was just looking at the hunter one, and thought I saw that general design as a PvP set - I THINK it was in Wrath, or possibly Cata?

Comentario de Micros

on 2016-02-02T22:45:50-06:00

Is it just me or are some of those tier sets INCREDIBLY boring and disappointing? Like, hunter and monk the most so. Those look like generic Wrath vendor gear.

Opinions on attractiveness of a tier is always subjective, but they do have a trend of having the first tier set be a little more 'plain' and amping up the effects the stronger they get in the expac.

Comentario de chaserzdream

on 2016-02-03T02:04:37-06:00

Is it just me or are some of those tier sets INCREDIBLY boring and disappointing? Like, hunter and monk the most so. Those look like generic Wrath vendor gear.

If by that you mean they doing have giant things coming out of them(which is good), then i agree.

If you mean they look bad, i disagree lol

Comentario de Albaharmamar

on 2016-02-03T02:50:30-06:00

"We understand the importance of utility" they say as they remove 90% of utility spells from healers (and everybody else)

so much garbage lmao

Comentario de Ashoush85

on 2016-02-03T03:04:08-06:00

well, the druid cape is the only one that matches the set perfectly IMO

Comentario de Waterfuzz

on 2016-02-03T03:16:01-06:00

WHY is everything about legion tiers so boring?

Comentario de Sindarion

on 2016-02-03T04:13:46-06:00

well, the druid cape is the only one that matches the set perfectly IMO

This!The priest cloak doesn't match the bright colours of the set at all.

Comentario de DooMijasz

on 2016-02-03T06:55:06-06:00

Stupid pre-legion subtelty players had to complain about the new playstyle.... of course they had to otherwise rogue's in raid would be actually fun to play not dumb difficult like right now with all that mess with dots, backstab positioning and akward stealth managment.... Jesus I hate these guys for yelling and crying so hard that they actually made blizzard change it.

Comentario de Ykovuk

on 2016-02-03T07:58:59-06:00

IMO, some cloaks look like a bunch of different-sized cloaks overlapping one another.Pally / Mage look like they carry about 4-5 different cloaks. Even better: hunter looks like the player never removed the first cloak he looted now completely torn to shreds.

Comentario de Kapira

on 2016-02-03T08:17:34-06:00

Oh my gosh those cloaks are beautiful. I really hope they won't be class/tier-specific though. They would open up so many transmog options. I know I personally have trouble finding good cloaks to match since so many of them are really out-there and colorful... the Demon Hunter ones for example are so elegant and simple! And the blood-elf-colored one for Mages would be amazing for all classes of blood elves.

Comentario de Maelchav

on 2016-02-03T08:17:58-06:00

Even if they don't add a 6-piece bonus, I'd like it if cloaks were included as a sixth piece of the set. That would allow some flexibility when combining pieces of different sets while progressing.

For instance, I rarely raid - almost exclusively LFR. So if I could get four pieces of Tier x gear for the 2- and 4-piece bonuses, that's great; maybe I eventually get all six pieces; then when the next tier comes out, I pick up two pieces and get the 2-piece bonus from Tier x+1; over time maybe I can get a couple more and end up with the Tier x 2-piece and Tier x+1 4-piece. I just dig the possibility of mixing and matching bonuses as well as the gear itself.

But hey, I'm not opposed to a 6-piece bonus!

Comentario de TutorialBlox

on 2016-02-03T08:46:39-06:00

Is it just me or are some of those tier sets INCREDIBLY boring and disappointing? Like, hunter and monk the most so. Those look like generic Wrath vendor gear.

If by that you mean they doing have giant things coming out of them(which is good), then i agree.

If you mean they look bad, i disagree lol

What the hell does that mean? lol

Comentario de CrossCynical

on 2016-02-03T08:47:34-06:00

Still want to see what the LFR gear looks like this expansion. The gear in WoD was so bland